STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A car reported stolen from a New Brighton street is believed to have been used in a brutal late-night robbery that left a Bayonne gas station attendant shot in the chest Sunday.

View full size11:00:44 P.M. SUNDAY: Security video at the Exxon station on Route 440 in Bayonne shows a Volkswagen Passat pulling into the station.

Video footage released by police recorded the brazen episode in its entirety. Now detectives in Bayonne and on Staten Island have focused their attention on finding a 1999 Volkswagen Passat reported stolen from the 300 block of Westervelt Avenue the same night as the holdup.

The gas station robbery took place at 11 p.m. Sunday, at the Exxon Station on Route 440 and Fifth Street. The shot attendant is reportedly in stable condition. NYPD spokesman Detective Joseph Cavitolo confirmed yesterday that the NYPD was investigating the reported theft of the car, while detectives in Bayonne were looking into the vehicle’s connection with the violent robbery.

View full sizeKathy Erie's car was stolen.

The car’s owner last saw the vehicle at 10 p.m. Sunday; it was gone at 11:45 p.m., when she went to retrieve an item from it, Cavitolo said. She called 911 to report the theft just before midnight but no one answered the door when police arrived, Cavitolo said.

View full size11:00:48 P.M.: A man wearing a gray hoodie points a pistol at the attendant.

Police got a second call reporting the vehicle stolen at 2 p.m. Monday.

The car is still missing.

The car’s owner, Elsie Kathy Erie, a 45-year-old grandmother, spent the better part of yesterday morning and afternoon being questioned by detectives in
onne about her car, and at one point took a polygraph test to convince police she had nothing to do with its disappearance, said a friend who accompanied her to the New Jersey police station yesterday.

“She doesn’t know, and right now she’s got a migraine,” said the friend, speaking on condition of anonymity. “She doesn’t know what the story is.”

11:01:06 P.M.: The man in the gray hoodie allegedly shoots the attendant, who had been struggling with the man in the orange hoodie, who appears to be carrying a shotgun.

Ms. Erie told detectives there’s only one key to the vehicle, and she surrendered that key to police, according to the friend.

Ms. Erie herself did not respond to requests for comment yesterday, and representatives of the Bayonne Police Department did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Police have released video footage of the robbery — at about 40 seconds in, what appears to be a maroon or burgundy Volkswagen Passat rolls up to the attendant’s booth. A passenger wearing a gray hoodie sweatshirt gets out of the rear driver’s side, holding a handgun on the attendant.

A second passenger gets out from the other side of the car. He’s wearing an orange hoodie and appears to be toting a shotgun.

Security video at the Exxon station on Route 440 in Bayonne shows an attendant struggling with two men just before he was shot.

The attendant struggles with the man in orange, and pushes him out of the booth. That’s when the man in gray shoots the attendant once with his handgun.

The attendant staggers out of view of the camera, and after the man in orange lingers in the booth for a few seconds, the two suspects get back into the car, which is being driven by a third person. At one point, while the attendant is struggling with his assailant, a white car pulls up and quickly drives away.

The attendant, who is 37 years old, is in stable condition at the Jersey City Medical Center, according to the Jersey Journal, and police are investigating whether the culprits committed similar robberies in Harrison, N.J., and Newark.

Anyone with information about these robberies is asked to contact Bayonne detectives at 201-858-6925 or call the confidential tip line at 1-877-900-8477.

Tipsters can also contact the NYPD’s Crimestoppers hotline at 800-577-TIPS, or send tips via text message by texting CRIMES (274637), then entering TIP577. All calls will be kept confidential.